House defense appropriators consider shutting down Gitmo

[babylonsister]

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/house-defense-appropriators-consider-closing-gitmo-2007-06-22.html

House defense appropriators consider shutting down Gitmo
By Roxana Tiron
June 22, 2007

The House defense appropriators are considering including language in the 2008 spending bill that would close Guantanamo Bay prison, according to a senior defense appropriator.

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), a strong proponent of closing the controversial military detainee facility, said that the defense subcommittee is planning to introduce a provision to shut down the detention unit for suspected terrorists in Cuba.

He added, however, that parts of the facility would need to stay open for a period of time for the detainees brought over most recently from the CIA’s secret prisons abroad.

Guantanamo would be left open “just for specific purposes, but we’re not going to keep more than 5 percent of the people there,” Moran told The Hill Friday.

Moran has already sponsored an amendment to the House 2008 defense authorization bill that would require the Pentagon to study the current capacity of U.S. military facilities to hold and try detainees now held at Guantanamo Bay.

But the provision in the defense appropriations bill will be “much more definitive,” said Moran. He said that the White House knows that Democrats will up pressure to close Guantanamo, and accordingly has started considering a recommendation to speed up the process of closing the facility.

more...

[EFerrari]

1. How can they dance around this atrocity?

:mad:

[youngdem]

2. Because for the most part, we have a one party Corporatocracy

Which is ruthless in its pursuit of absolute control of everything, and unconcerned with its public image.

[EFerrari]

9. Please don't take me there.

:(

[youngdem]

11. Sorry. I'm Captain Negative today.

My car broke down today just as we had loaded the car and tried to pull out of the garage to go on vacation, and I am grouchy about it.

[EFerrari]

13. Remember the take off and the landing are the hardest part.

Have a great time, youngdem. :)

/oops, grammar

[youngdem]

18. Sadly, I am grounded....My 'aircraft' is my jeep.

We were heading to the coast for some fishing and beach time.

Now, I wait for the mobile repairman.

Thanks for the kind wishes. Have a great weekend.

[EFerrari]

25. It'll work out. Same thing happened to us one year

and after all the drama, we got a break.

(Ours was the only Volvo wagon in Bakersfield, after being towed 40 miles from the Butterfield Exit. When we hit a rest stop, I got to see a sign with a high heeled woman and a red slash across her. I thought Bakersfield was anti heels until the bartender explained it to me. lol)

Hang in, youngdem.

[Disturbed]

3. Where would they send around 300 Detainees?

I strongly suspect that it would not be within the US. The prime location would be Diego Garcia. Search engine that name.

[MADem]

6. If not DGAR, then Nutjobistan or one of those old Soviet bloc joints that need some dough.... nt

[EFerrari]

8. What about, send them home? These guys were sold to us

by people who needed money and we've known for years that more than 80% of them never pointed a weapon at a GI.

And, I know about DG and what we did to THOSE people. Cr@P! It's just freakin' endless. :mad:

[babylonsister]

10. They're building a new prison in Afghanistan, but claim it's not solely

for the Gitmo detainees. Who says they're not 3 steps ahead of us?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070622/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_guantanamo;_ylt=An0klhD9zQZeU4RvIhdifGvMWM0F

US may move detainees to Afghan prison

By DEB RIECHMANN and MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writers 50 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The United States is helping build a prison in Afghanistan to take some prisoners now at Guantanamo Bay, but the White House said Friday it is not meant as an alternative to the detainee facility in Cuba.

The Bush administration wants to close Guantanamo Bay and move its terror suspects to prisons elsewhere and senior officials have told The Associated Press a consensus is building among the president's top advisers on how to do it.

The administration is looking to resolve the issue swiftly, White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino told reporters Friday, although she said there's no deadline set.

more...

[EFerrari]

12. I'm really, REALLY not liking this.

Prison Planet doesn't seem so fringe any more. :(

[Double T]

4. THEY can't shutdown GITMO!!!!!

bushco's lifetime reservations are still standing.

[MADem]

5. Didn't they cancel the "Let's Close Gitmo" WH meeting scheduled for today?

Heck, "Let's Close Gitmo" just means let's break up the gang and send them to some former Soviet satellite states where we have a little "facility" set up, or maybe off to DGAR, or somewhere else that's kinda off the beaten track.

It'll be the job of the planespotters to start tracking BUNOs to get a clue, then....

But Jim Moran's heart is in the right place at any rate.

[EFerrari]

14. They're playing human rights "keep away", the bastards.

:mad:

[IChing]

7. Also defund the office of the Vice Presidency

It is well within their powers.

[EFerrari]

15. I've never seen so many people with so much power so unwilling

to use it.

It's just weird.

[IChing]

16. Weird is too kind

But the foundation and root of the word weird may explain it. The 'fates' will not look too kindly on them.



ORIGIN Old English wyrd destiny, of Germanic origin. The adjective ( late Middle English ) originally meant having the power to control destiny, and was used esp. in the Weird Sisters, originally referring to the Fates, later the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth; the latter use gave rise to the sense unearthly (early 19th cent.).

[EFerrari]

17. Great, now every time I watch CSPAN I'll be hearing

"When shall we three meet again?"

:rofl:

/ack

[IChing]

19. When the hurlyburly's done

When the battle's lost and won.

[EFerrari]

20. Sociopaths haven't changed much in 400 odd years.

:)

[Disturbed]

21. Britain's island in the sun - Diego Garcia is so secret .....

Britain's island in the sun becomes Blair's latest problem in torture scandal
By Gordon Thomas, Globe-Intel, <9 JUly 2004>

Tony Blair will face further embarrassing questions over the torture scandal as to why the government permitted the CIA and the US Department of Defence to operate a top-secret interrogation centre on Diego Garcia, a tiny and remote British Crown colony in the Indian Ocean.

High level leaders and operatives of al Qaeda and the Taliban are held there. None are protected by the Geneva Convention. Last week, FBI director Robert Mueller said the interrogation techniques used by the CIA interrogators violate all American anti-torture laws and would be prohibited in criminal cases of the most serious kind.

The interrogation techniques used on Diego Garcia are contained in a secret CIA manual on coercive questioning. It contains sections headed Threats and Fear, Pain, Narcosis and Heightened Suggestibility and Hypnosis.

The presence of the prisoners on Diego Garcia is so secret that a counter-terrorism official in Washington said President Bush had informed the CIA he did not want to know where they were.

More info here:

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27b/039.html

[EFerrari]

22. Our outsourced gulags.

:(

[IChing]

23. Diego Garcia is a pox on Britain and the US.-“Resisting the Empire”

NARRATOR: This is Diego Garcia, the main island of the Chagos group in the Indian Ocean. It was once a phenomenon of natural beauty and peace – a paradise. Today is one of America's biggest military bases in the world. There are more than 2,000 troops, 2 bomber runways, 30 warships, and a satellite spy station.

B-1 and B-52 long-range bombers extended their reach from the British base in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
NARRATOR:From here the United States has attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. The Pentagon calls it an indispensable platform for policing the world. Diego Garcia is a British colony. It lies midway between Africa and Asia, one of a group of unique coral islands. This is rare film taken by missionaries before the Americans came in the 1960s. Two thousand people lived in the Chagos islands, a gentle Creole population originally from Africa and India whose communities dated back to the late eighteenth century. They were thriving villages: a school, a hospital, a jail, a church, a railway, and, above all, a benign, undisturbed way of life.>>>>snip

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/07/1347259


http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0706/S00111.htm

[Solly Mack]

24. U.S. Building Detainment Facility In Afghanistan

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/topstories_story_173131805.html

"The United States is helping build a prison in Afghanistan to take some prisoners now at Guantanamo Bay, but the White House said Friday it is not meant as an alternative to the detainee facility in Cuba."

[EFerrari]

26. And we're footing the bill for this shell game.

:mad:

[Solly Mack]

27. Yep we sure are

they figure shutting down GTMO ..or reducing the numbers at GTMO (by sending the people elsewhere) will cause people to feel better...out of sight, out of mind...

America is more worried about the image than actually stopping the crimes.